Glowforge launched today

[Dave Sheldrake]

You do know that most of the largest companies in the world run nearly entirely cloud-based?

Very true, I believe Facebooks data center servers are some of the biggest...

The companies using "cloud" services also happen to own the servers they run on.

Lots of fear of the unknown.

Not fear at all, just annoyance that some of the claims made break fundamental laws that have been in place and tested for decades.

This product fills a huge need for users who want to make cool stuff and can't afford 20k or more to do it, are intimidated by hard to use software, or don't have any intention of starting a big businesss.

Much like the lovely Lady who asked me on Facebook yesterday what this Glowforge will cut and "can it laser in colour", not the ladies fault at all and yes a cause of some private mirth initially but after thinking about it this is somebody that is IN the target market Glowforge are aiming at and believes it is just a case of plug in,switch on = end product.
These are the kind of people that will make a mistake...mistakes with something running at considerable kV and with a beam that we have no blink reflex to that can blind in fractions of a second are usually serious.

There is one most important step in selling a consumer product: 1: BUILD A GOOD PRODUCT.

Just the opposite, you build a product that will sell at the lowest manufacturing cost and the highest possible retail.

do you think they werent asking about safety before investing millions of dollars?

I would suggest the amount VW invested in circumventing emission data was considerably more.

[Jason Hilton]

Very true, I believe Facebooks data center servers are some of the biggest...

The companies using "cloud" services also happen to own the servers they run on.

That's not true at all and the fact that you think so tells me you don't know what you're talking about. Tens of thousands of companies run on cloud services provided by oracle, Microsoft, Google, etc. Hell sawmill creek almost certainly runs on cloud redundant servers with CDN services (and if they don't they should, saves tons of money).

Not fear at all, just annoyance that some of the claims made break fundamental laws that have been in place and tested for decades.

More like you are reading far too much into a single tech spec and 1 sentence response to an interview question...

Just the opposite, you build a product that will sell at the lowest manufacturing cost and the highest possible retail.

Spoken like a man who's never built a product.

[Gary Hair]

I'm going to suggest to the moderators that this thread be locked. It's turned into nothing more than bickering and serves no useful purpose to continue.

[Lee DeRaud]

... believes it is just a case of plug in, switch on = end product.

Even if the Glowforge does absolutely everything it's claimed to be capable of, perfectly, every time, that just ain't gonna happen.

I'm reminded of several heated conversations I had with scrollsaw people years ago, who thought using a laser was "cheating", by creating products automatically. I pointed out that they were, in effect, claiming that the creative part of their process was the mindless feeding of wood through a saw blade following printed designs. The fact that, in a lot of cases, they were stealing those designs didn't help their case any.

[Lee DeRaud]

Copyrights & trademarks-- you guys should read this: https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/w...k-infringement
--the "functional use" thing is pretty interesting.

Erm...maybe not. Consider this quote:

Want to make and sell sports jerseys with your favorite team's insignia emblazoned on them? Functional—proves the wearers are fans of the team. No infringement.

The key phrase is "proves the wearers are fans of the team". But it's not the buyers/wearers of the jerseys that have infringed: it's the makers/sellers. They have to prove that making/selling the jerseys is an expression of their love for the team (as opposed to making money), which will be very hard to prove if for example they're making/selling jerseys for all 32 NFL teams.
Further:

It's almost impossible to imagine these results—the case has yet to be followed by name or in spirit by any other court, and hasn't even been cited by its own court in any subsequent case yet.

I'm going to file that under "not gonna happen", at least with regard to manufacture and sale of trademarked items. What it may do is establish a clear "personal-use" exemption, which is effectively all it did in the case in question. Disney/Harley/etc will certainly claim that once the item appears in public (e.g. wearing the Cowboys jersey you printed in your basement to a game), that is no longer personal use...and they'll probably win.

[Scott Shepherd]

I'm going to suggest to the moderators that this thread be locked. It's turned into nothing more than bickering and serves no useful purpose to continue.

Probably a good time for that Gary. If we need to reopen it, we can.